Chapter 4

CHAPTER XBeyond Wastralls rose a line of black cliffs culminating in the high ground of Dark Head and, towards them, Leadville turned. No roads crossed these solitudes. Sheep cropped the fine herbage, sea-gulls built on the inaccessible ledges, tumuli and earthworks showed that man too had once sheltered here. Far inland an occasional grey homestead, in its nest of farm-buildings, could be discerned, while in clear weather the daymark was visible on Stepper Point. Otherwise the eye was given only the wide spaces of sky and sea and earth.On the storm which had strewn the coast with wreckage had followed a land wind; and this had brought in the weed with which the coast-dwellers manure their sandy fields. The sea, in big unquiet rollers, fell heavily against the walls and islands of rock. It was dark with the slippery oreweed and, when the tide went out, the coves and bays would be ankle-deep in shining olive-brown masses. In that treeless wind-swept land however, the people look to the sea-harvest for more than weed. To the beaches drift beams that can be split into gate shivers; hatches, which put together, make a reasonable pig's house; chests and spars and miscellaneous wreckage. From cottage and hamlet the folks converge upon the coast and, at any other time, Byron would have stopped above the nearest sandy cove to shout down an offer for some of the piles of wood. Now he strode by, unconscious of the tiny carts being filled with planks and boxes, of the little figures intent on their grim work of salvage. The man was fleeing from the intolerable revelation that had been thrust upon him. He was closing his ears, his mind, his heart, seeking to delay the inevitable moment when he must give heed; yet with him, in the depths of his being, was carrying that from which he fled.So obsessed was he with the desire to get away, to put space between him and that terrible prophetic voice, that he did not realize his solitudes had been invaded. He pressed on, crossing cliff-faces and climbing steeps. The crags, the wide prospect, the sea-unrest were familiar to him, this waif and foreigner who had come up out of the deep and could claim no place as home, no human being as of his blood. He was as safe among the crags as if he had been born to wings. The people, labouring far below, saw the grey figure on the heights and craned their necks to watch his perilous progress; and the salving of a good ship's bones went on more slowly because Leadville Byron, on a ledge six inches wide and cut away underneath, a ledge of black and crumbling slate, was risking a possession dear to no one but himself.The man was coming to Dark Head as a hurt child rushes blindly to its mother. Hither had he fled after every difference with Sabina and here had he found a vastness, a changelessness, an impersonal peace upon which he could rest his little and tortured soul. His trouble was greater now. He was in the grip of powers which, if he could not escape from them, might break him. By climbing peaks on which cormorants had nested in a confidence hitherto secure, by ploughing through deep sands and up the slippery shale, by crazy leaps and a wild expenditure of force, he tried to exhaust himself. By so doing he might avoid, not only knowledge, but the sinister possibilities of his nature.Dark Head is a narrow peninsula of rock which stands knee-deep in water. A green mane of turf ripples to the black edge and Leadville, scourged across the waste, came at last to a softness of thick untrodden grass. This was the world's end and behind lay the amazing cruelty of life. The great spaces were clean and they were sweet. The man strode to the sloping edge but, because he was not yet ready to surrender his atom of consciousness, drew back. For a moment he stood, looking vacantly across the breathing sea, then turned and flung himself upon the bed the ages had prepared. The grass, wind-swept and deep, yielded a little, closing about his heavy figure like the displaced water of a pool.On a rock below, an oyster-catcher chattered disapproval but the gulls and shyer cormorants came back to their resting-places. The man was harmless and after the storm they must make the most of the sunshine. They stood about, preening themselves in the red light and above the southern hills but near them, the sun made the half-circle of the sky.In moments of overwhelming emotion Byron, when the strain grew too intense, had hitherto passed into another state of consciousness. The sound of hammering had as it were, opened a door, beyond which was a bewildering peace. Forgetfulness had fallen on him like a garment and when he came back it was, always, to begin afresh. Sabina's words however, though they roused him to a frenzy of feeling, had not had the usual effect. He had not been able to escape.Drowned in an agony that was elemental he lay on the cliff-top, supine and motionless; Sabina's bitter revelation had been like the pouring of vitriol over his heart. Loving for the first time in his life, loving with the passion of a highly emotional temperament, the hopelessness of his love had been thrust suddenly upon him. A disappointment so elemental, so profound, put him beside himself. His instinct was, somehow, to escape the ultimate pangs. He had fled before the flood, fled from himself, scrambled and sobbed himself across the cliffs until he came to rest, deep in the deep grass of the headland.His exhaustion was so great that for some time he lay supine as the wreckage on the sands below. As the moments passed, however, consciousness began to return and with it, through the darkness of his mind flitted unhappy thought, a greyness here and there, a vague suspicion. By degrees Sabina's face detached itself from the background. He saw it resentful and defiant and, tired as he was, his gorge rose. The woman was for ever in his road. She had withheld Wastralls from him, now she would come between him and Gray. He saw again the strong lined face, the unlovely trunk; saw them with a dislike which had for some time been growing in intensity. Since her accident Sabina had been to him a death's-head, a creature which, without the power to enjoy, yet clung to its possessions; which, though its grave was yawning, persisted in dragging a repulsive mortality about the earth. A person with any decency of feeling, would have lain her down under the turf and slept the good sleep; but Sabina was neither dead nor alive. That trolly! He cursed it for the hideous thing it was and for the unseemly activity of which it was the symbol. He would have liked to break it in pieces. He would have enjoyed the wrecking and scattering.Circumstances had put Sabina in opposition to him and had given her the upper hand; but if it came to a struggle he did not fear the issue.Sitting up on his bed of grass he stared out to sea and, on the horizon, the ships went along and along, far off blacknesses, dim trails of smoke. He did not see them, was indeed unconscious of his material surroundings, but his mind was beginning to work. Behind Sabina's denying face he sensed the opposition of Gray's mother. Hitherto he had regarded Mrs. Tom as a friendly circumstance; but he knew she was shrewd and, in a small way, ambitious. Jim Rosevear of Treketh would be a satisfactory match. He had the promise of a good farm and was a steady chap. And Gray? Would she take her mother's penny shrewdness for wisdom, marry a young man for his youth, do the commonplace thing?For the first time since the blow had fallen, Byron allowed himself to think of Gray driving away from him with Jim Rosevear. Suffocating with rage, he fell forward again upon the grass.Such passion as that of Leadville Byron is the creative force at its human strongest and the man who feels it, recognizes in it something of the divine. He cannot doubt that he will be able to inspire in its object an equal flame; and he seeks, with a persistence worthy of its sacred object, for his opportunity. Byron had the most precious thing in the world to offer Gray and nothing, not her mother, not the hampering circumstance of a wife, not even her girlish preference for another man, would be allowed to stand in his way.Noon found him by the yard gate of Wastralls. He had drifted back across the waste because the way was familiar to his wandering feet; and he reached the farm as the kitchen clock began to strike. The familiar sound, hoarse and creaking as the voice of an old person, carried across the sunshiny yard and the man stood to count the strokes. Twelve o'clock! Where had the morning gone? He rubbed his eyes like one waking out of sleep and, as he did so, became aware that a horse had been tethered to the staple and that beyond the horse, was a gig. The varnish of this threw off a hundred cheerful reflections while the buckles and bosses of the harness were of a highly polished brass. The glitter and hard cheeriness of the whole were like the sharp gleams of frost on a sunshiny winter morning. Byron recognized the gig as belonging to Dr. Derek of Stowe. Whenever other business brought him into the parish, the doctor was apt to drop in for a chat with his late patient. He liked her, but he had also a professional reason for coming. Her recovery had surprised him, for such vitality is unusual; and he meant to keep an eye on the case.The farmer hesitated for a moment. He was not in a mood for talk. Nevertheless the force which had already set his feet upon a hidden road drove him forward and he took his accustomed way across the now slushy yard, straight to the porch. Clean blue flagstones ran by the hedge-gripe, turning at right angles along the side of the house; but, as Byron had once contemptuously said, "They were all right for cats and women, he wasn't afraid of a little mud."As he opened the door the appetizing smell of new bread rushed out. Sabina had been baking and, on the side-table, stood a row of crusty loaves flanked by lightly piled splits while behind was enough white cake and saffron cake to carry the household over Christmas.Byron stood for a moment, his bloodshot eyes scanning the place. The kitchen being a dark room, a new-comer required time to forget the sun. As his pupils widened, however, he perceived ensconced in Old Squire's big chair, a little man, rosy-gilled and grey-haired. This man was eating, with an air of pleasant enjoyment, a thunder-and-lightning split and, beside him on a stool, stood a cup of tea. Though Dr. Derek had been out all night he looked as if fresh from his bath; and no one could have supposed that this snack of new bread was in place of the breakfast he had missed. Opposite him, her unwieldy bulk seeming about to overflow the wicker cone of the trolley, sat Mrs. Byron, a quiet somewhat distrait figure. The contrivance had been made when she was a comparatively normal shape. Since then she had grown stouter, 'gone abroad'; and a new and roomier cone was becoming imperative. She looked tired after her morning's bread-making and her face had lost its jovial look. Over it a breath had passed, dulling the gaiety, wiping away even content, and the breath was one to which all of us, unhappily, can fit a name.Dr. Derek looked up at the farmer's entrance. "Just come from Curvithick," said he, "and thought I'd look in on my way home."Curvithick Farm, the mistress of which had been cheerfully expecting her thirteenth child, lay on the other side of the main road at the head of the valley. The land marched with that of Constantine Rosevear. "Maggie Martin 'av got a baker's dozen now then," said Mrs. Byron but she spoke without her usual interest in her neighbour's concerns."She's done better than that," and Dr. Derek helped himself to another split. "She's got twins!""Twins? My dear sawl and body, whatever they gwine do now with so many childer?""Twelve last night and fourteen this morning!" Dr. Derek looked pleased. He held that a declining birth-rate meant the opportunity of his country's enemies and was himself the father of five sons and four daughters. He was wont to declare blandly that he lived in the West because the women there had, on the whole, a sense of their duty to the empire."Boy and cheeld?" pursued Mrs. Byron."Yes, one of each kind, a pigeon pair." He beamed at her through round glasses, the rims of which had a yellow gleam, and passed his cup for more tea. "Your splitters are excellent, Mrs. Byron—but you," he shook his head, "what have you been doing with yourself?"Sabina glanced at her husband who, after greeting the doctor, had seated himself heavily on the window-bench. The family physician has slipped gradually into the place of the family confessor and, if Byron had not been present, she might have taken Dr. Derek to a small extent into her confidence. As it was, she acknowledged her state without offering to explain it. "I don't feel very special. I be all any'ow to-day."Not having seen her for some time Dr. Derek did not suspect that her wan looks and cheerless air were what a day had brought forth. Remembering the keen hearty cross-country woman of former days and contrasting her with this dulled stay-at-home, he found support for his theory that the amazing rally after her accident had been the last flicker of a strong vitality. She had gone downhill since he saw her last."You've been doing more than you should," and a glance at the array of loaves emphasized his words. "That heart of yours won't stand much, Mrs. Byron. A little extra strain, you know, and you'll find yourself in Queer Street."Leadville who had been staring down at the gun which still lay across the table, turned his heavy eyes on the doctor. "'Tis no good tellin' 'er to stop, for she will carry on as long as she mind to. I tell 'er I'll do the out-o'-door work for 'er, but 'er won't listen, so 'tis so well I leave it drop."The little bright doctor glanced from wife to husband and back again. With neat compact theories about everything, he held that Sabina's childlessness was the key to the situation. "Here's a man ready and willing to take the work off your shoulders! Why not make use of him? He'd save you all sorts of worries.""I reckon he would," and Sabina covered bitterness with a smile. "He'd never say nothing about 'em. He'd keep 'em all to 'isself.""Considering," retorted the doctor crisply, "that you have by no means regained your strength, surely that would be a good thing?"Sabina shook her head. He did not understand and she could not explain. "I'd rather ride my own 'obby-'arse," she said vaguely."Don't overtax your strength then or you'll be sorry for it." After all, whether she should wear herself out quickly or rot by the chimney corner, was her affair.Leadville withdrew his fascinated gaze from the gun. "Didn't I 'ear you say, last time you was 'ere, she ought to 'ave a operation?""I did, it wouldn't be a serious one, a matter of a week or so in hospital. What do you think, Mrs. Byron? To have it done would make you much more comfortable. Stronger too, I fancy."But Sabina's recollection of the days after her accident, those days of pain and discomfort when she had hung conscious and half consenting on the edge of the void, was still clear. She wondered why Leadville should be showing this sudden interest on her concerns. Did he wish to get her out of the way again, so that he might be up to his tricks? Or did he think he still had a chance with Gray? She could smile to herself over his infatuation. It would not be long now before he realized its hopelessness."I don't like that old knife business," she said. "I'll live as long as I can and then I must die.""This is hardly worth calling an operation.""Thank you, doctor, I'll stay where I'm to.""A wilful woman!" he said, rising. "Well, then, I must send you a tonic and Byron'll see that you take it.""He's likely to," she said."Now come, Mrs. Byron, can't have you saying things like that. The person who is really interested in your getting better is your husband. You don't know what he was like when you were in hospital.""I think," said she, with a little twitch of the lips, "as I can make a guess. But thank 'ee all the same, doctor."Picking up his gun, Byron followed the doctor out of the house. The farmer might prefer to strike a path for himself but Dr. Derek had a feline dislike of dirt and wet. His patent-leather boots, small and pointed, twinkled in the sunshine as he stepped along the blue flagstones, and through his bright round glasses, his steel-blue eye shot an inquiring gleam at the man, padding heavily at his side.Against that neat personality, Leadville's big frame showed rough and heavy. He was the hulking unshaven countryman, powerful as a bear and with a bear's light but ungainly walk. He did not attempt to accommodate his stride to the other's city gait but lounged along somewhere in his neighbourhood."The missis 'aven't been 'erself lately," Byron volunteered as they came up to the gate, "an' I wish you could make her do as you say. P'raps, next time you come, you'll try and persuade 'er?"With his plans not yet matured, one way out of his difficulties was as good as another. If Sabina could be persuaded to return to the hospital for a time, he would only have to deal with Mrs. Tom.The doctor climbed into the gig. "'Tis no good, Byron. When she says 'No' there's no moving her."The farmer's vague gaze was fixed on the glittering harness but his heart sank. "I should like to have everything done that can be done," he growled in his deep voice."I know, my good fellow," comforted the other. "Well, don't let her do more than you can help and keep her diet as light as possible. Not too much pork, you know, and no heavy suppers.""She won't be said by me," returned Byron."Well, well, one does the best one can and there's no more to be said. Wonderful case! Never thought she'd turn that first corner; yet, there she is, doing a day's work. It's a pity she's growing so stout. When I think of what she was!" With his small well-kept hands, the polished nails of which scattered tiny reflections of the light, he made a gesture of pity and regret. "The strength of a man, and now——"Byron stepped back from the gig. "And now," he said grimly as the cob began to move, "now, she's a proper wreck."CHAPTER XIAn hour later Byron came into the kitchen carrying a small dead seal. Climbing down by a little treacherous path, he had seen it lying at the mouth of a cave and for some minutes had stood to watch it. By means of an inner membrane it was clearing first one nostril of sea-water and then the other; and he had shot it while it was still unaware of him."What's become o' the furnace?" he asked. "I told George to leav'n by the hedge-gripe."Sabina, though a farmer, preserved some feminine traits and in particular a love of tidiness. She was as clean as a cat and to see her yard churned up by the hoofs of the cattle, and the farm implements at the mercy of the weather, troubled her. The rusty furnace, an outdoor stove used for farm purposes and, in particular, to try out seal-oil, had been an eyesore and she had had it removed."'Tis out in the bullocks' house."Leadville 'damned 'er up in the 'eaps for interferin' with 'is things'; but he spoke, not harshly so much as absent-mindedly."I'll 'av the place as I've a mind to," returned Sabina placidly. Her husband had often raged against the equable good nature which suffered without malice, as a mother surfers the unreasonableness of her child. Now he only muttered vaguely as he set the gun in its thongs over the door."Where's Dick to?""Drayin' oreweed." Sabina, who had manoeuvred the trolly close to the fender, had been nodding in the agreeable warmth. An indoor life had made her susceptible to cold and this afternoon she felt tired and ill. The emotions rather than the work of the day had exhausted her, and she had thought to snatch a few minutes' rest before Mrs. Tom, whom she was expecting to call on the way back from Stowe, should arrive."You'll catch afire one of these days if you keep on gruddlin' so," said Byron, with a fathering wish. Sabina could not follow his thought, in fact she mistook it for solicitude. It was long since he had shown any interest in her welfare. Could the doctor's visit, revealing that she was in a poor way, have brought her husband to a better mind? Like the rest of us she could not believe that it takes all sorts to make a world and, in the eyes of others, saw consequently only the reflection of herself. She looked hopefully at Leadville and at once he turned away, hanging his big head and balancing from one foot to the other. His mind was stirring, as the sand crawls under an army of ants. He felt the movement, was perhaps vaguely conscious of the direction in which he was going, but could not see the end; not yet.A cart laden with glistening weed, wet and olive-brown, had come up from the beach. As Leadville lounged out of the porch he saw that Dick Bennett was the driver. The weed had been left by the receding tide, left ankle-deep in every sandy bay, strewn over the black rocks; a generous provision, enough for every potato-patch in the parish. Nor did the glossy slippery weed constitute the whole of the sea-harvest. Manure for the fields, wood for the kitchen fires and, what that wood had held—oranges and shelled walnuts, crates and bags and boxes—had floated in during the night. The sea had been good to the lonely dwellers on her coasts; and she had offered, in her own gruesome fashion, a Christmas gift."The furnace, maister? I knaw where 'tis to. Leave me empt up this and I'll get it for yer."When the stove, red with rust, had been reinstated in the shelter of the hedge, Byron took up the limp body and began to prepare it."That's every bit of coal we got, till Jim bring 'ome some from Stowe," said Bennett as he poured a shovelful of round knobs, which had been salvaged from the sea, on to the furze bushes, and set them alight."There's plenty of wood there," grunted the other, "so we must burn that.""I should think 'twas time Jim 'ud be back." The hind was a little mournful man with a grievance. He had seen Jim drive off that morning, in his Sunday suit, with a pretty girl for company; and he had felt that he himself, older in service, should have been sent. "But these young chaps, when they go an errand, they take good care they don't come 'ome very quick. Course," he added grudgingly, "'e can spend the day in Stowe without any trouble.""Oh, shut yer mouth," cried the other savagely. The man's grumbling chatter had obliged him to remember that Jim Rosevear was with Gray. Till then, he had succeeded in keeping the thought of their proximity at the back of his mind. It had been difficult, but he had done it. Dick had made it no longer possible and the day in Stowe unrolled itself before his jealous eyes—the drive in, a drive of five good Cornish miles, the drive behind Lady who, though a good mare, was slow: the stall in the market where Rosevear would set up the trestles, help the girl arrange to the best advantage the eggs, the poultry, the pounds and half pounds of butter: the meeting after market on the Quay where, the wagon being loaded with coal and flour, they would leave Lady by the warehouse while they hurried from shop to shop, she buying and he carrying the parcels: finally the long drive home in the windy dusk. Leadville tortured himself with the thought of that drive, of Gray's softness and nearness, of the little face between the fur of cap and necklet, the little smiling face....He had been skinning the seal. Much as less powerful men skin a rabbit, he had been tearing the coat, grey and damp, from the smooth pale body. A stone wall, five foot broad at the base and crowned with tamarisk bushes, is what in Cornwall is called a hedge. It is at least a shelter from the wind, and Dick Bennett had been careful to set the furnace in a lew corner. The furze bushes burnt with a crackle and above them the sea-coal smouldered slowly in large red lumps. The air in the yard was fresh but still, and through it, a warm reek, rose the smell of blood. It rose to Byron's nostrils, affecting him as it affects the children of the wild, rousing in him that primitive, long-forgotten, but deathless passion which claims survival as its right and, battling before the hosts that wait to be called across the threshold, stakes its life. Between his hands hung the limp body and he wrenched at the skin in a growing fury of impatience. His blunt dark-skinned fingers were foul and, as the sealskin slipped he noticed that a trickle of thickening blood had run down his palm on to the wrist. He stared at this from between narrowed eyelids for a second, then, stooping his big head, licked it away. The taste of it, salt on his tongue, further affected an equilibrium already unstable; and the beast which slumbers behind the arras of our civilization, which stirs with a faint growl at every shaking of that decent cover, that savage incalculable beast of the long past, awoke. The blood-lust rose in him. He forgot the presence of the bullock-man, the time, the place, everything but a sudden overmastering need. Something, he could not remember what, had defied him and it was of paramount necessity that this something should be done away with, destroyed, ground into the earth. To rend and crush had become obligatory, the vindication of his claim to live. The poor body of the seal was gone and in its place was an enemy who had been given into his hands. He caught up the carcass, seeing not it, but all he hated, all he was burning to destroy and the dismemberment degenerated from honest butchery into an orgy. Dick Bennett stood aghast. In the master's eye was a wildness which made the hind thankful he was even more inconspicuous than small. For once his querulousness was hushed. "The old devil pulled and dragged and 'acked as though 'e was mad," was his description afterwards of the scene. "'E fetched 'is spite out on the poor creature. It made me fairly sick to see 'im."Bit by bit the crushed fragments of bloody flesh were cast into the cauldron; but as long as bone or sinew held together, Byron tore at the body with unabated passion. The last lump was flung in with the same fury of effort as the first; but as soon as his hands were empty, the mood passed. The sweat was on his forehead, his knees were knocking together and he was trembling, but he seemed unconscious of his condition. For some minutes he stood by the furnace staring vacantly into the bubbling depths but by degrees his breath came more evenly, and the suavity of successful effort began to wash over his tortured mind.Daunted by his master's incomprehensible ferocity, the hind waited in the background; and, behind him again, the chickens picked and scratched and on the lichened roof the pigeons balanced in the sun. Byron was watching the formation of a large iridescent bubble. His eye dwelt languidly on the red and green transparence, on the smaller bubbles hurrying to its side; but as the film burst and disappeared he pushed the stirring-stick into the labourer's hand with a deep, "Mind you don't leave'n burn," and swung away. He was come fully to himself, a weary and a hungry self and he remembered that the dinner hour was long past.The outer door of the linhay opened on to a paved drying-yard and, as he passed through, he stooped his head under a sagging cord with the practical man's comment that a new prop was needed. Trifles, common-place and wholesome, were distracting his mind. He felt cold, noticed that what little wind there was had gone round to the north, noticed too that above Dark Head the sky was flaming with a sunset of good augury. The short December day being so near its close, the linhay was dark; but the hungry man knew where to lay his hand on a rabbit pasty. He had shot the rabbits and brought them in—to Gray; and now Gray was—where? Behind him lay the old house with its many chambers and not one of them harboured her. For the first time he realized that without Gray, Wastralls was but an empty shell.In a row on the shelf stood the loaves and, beside them, on a big white dish lay the pasties. Sabina had added onion and bacon to make them appetizing, parsley to give flavour, freshly dug potatoes to hold the gravy; and all was folded in a responsible crust. Her pasties were renowned; but Byron, satisfying his hunger, did not notice the quality of the food. He was still obsessed by his vision of the empty house. The barren years, when he had paced the friendly fields as a captive paces his cage, unable either to take action or to escape, had done their work. He had supported life on a meagre hope; but he was older now, less patient, had a shorter time left him in which to enjoy. The young Samson can afford to ask riddles and play tricks, it is the ageing man who, grown desperate, brings destruction upon the people. Standing by the shelf, eating hungrily but absent-mindedly, Byron presently became conscious of voices in the kitchen. For a moment his heart beat in swift anticipation. Was Gray back? He stopped eating to listen, but the voice which had suggested that of the young girl was older and had lost some of its West-country music. He recognized it disappointedly as that of the girl's mother.Filling himself a mug from the pitcher of milk that stood on the flags, Byron drank. If Mrs. Tom were in the kitchen the little party must have returned from Stowe, and the thought was, in a way, reassuring. Gray would be at Hember now and Rosevear would have come on to Wastralls with the mare and cart. At least they were no longer together.Byron's thoughts dwelt fleetingly on Rosevear. Should he go back, find the fellow and send him packing? He hated the sight of that womanishly smooth face. Some day he would send his fist crashing into it, put the weight of his shoulder into the blow. If he could fell a bullock it would be child's play to spoil Rosevear's beauty, to make him so as the chap's own mother wouldn't recognize him. When Gray saw what he made of her fine sweetheart, there would be no more hesitation—Leadville could not believe it to be more than hesitation. She would turn to the man who had proved in primal fashion his right to her.In the kitchen the women's voices rose and fell, lifting at the end in the Cornish way. Phrases and half words reached the man's ears and brought him to a distrustful consideration of them. These women, with their 'under-hauling,' their scheming, the way they 'held for each other'—what were they discussing? Him and his affairs? He fell to again on the pasty, biting into its hard crust with unnecessary force, biting indeed into more than crust and meat.Mrs. Tom, having brought in the Christmas groceries and stacked the tins and parcels on the side-table, had settled down for a chat. The bond between the women, which like themselves was stout and workaday, had been embroidered by the years with a pattern of memories; and what can be pleasanter at the end of a winter day than to sit by a bright fire with a friend who has been tried by time? Sabina talked of her husband, of the farm, of the future."Ah!" said Mrs. Rosevear cheerfully, "and now the time 'as come for 'ee to make a fresh start. When Leadville knaw about Gray, 'e will 'av to rest 'is 'eart content."Sabina stirred her tea in a meditative fashion. With a simple faith in good and evil, reward and punishment, it was puzzling to her that she who was a 'member and had gone to prayer meeting and chapel all right and been a good livin' woman,' should have had so much trouble. "I think it's a awful thing for 'e to be running after Gray, when 'e got a wife of's own?" she said. "Too bad, I do call it.""Well, there 'tis, my dear, I 'spose 'e can't 'elp it. Men are like that, bain't they, poor old dragons? Best thing to do is to keep temptation out of's way.""Do 'ee think so? Now I'd rather show'm as 'e can't 'av what 'e wants."The more clear-sighted woman did not dispute the matter. Even if Sabina wanted Gray and Jim to live at Wastralls, the decision would not rest with her. Gray would not care so long as she was with Jim, but he, though good-natured and easygoing, knew his own mind. Not long since, he had been over to Gentle Jane where his aunt, receiving him warmly, had been urgent that he should live with her. He had not given a definite answer, but Mrs. Tom knew he was considering the matter."Better for Leadville if 'e 'ad something to take up 'is time," she said. "E's always mumpin' around the cliffs like a wandering Jew."The wife's happy-go-lucky faith in Leadville's harmlessness did not commend itself to Mrs. Tom. She remembered the zest with which he had torn up the honeysuckle, the indifference he had shown as to whether Sabina lived or died, his moroseness since her return. They might yet have trouble with him."Well, 'tis 'is choice, 'e could work if 'e like; there's plenty to do, but 'e's not that way inclined.""'E 'as got fever of lurk,Two minds to eat and none to work,"quoted Mrs. Tom as she helped herself to a slice of yeast-cake. "If a man got nothin' else to think about, 'e sure to get into mischief. Can't you find something for'm to do? Why don't yer let'n go to town for 'ee in an' out, and work a team sometimes?""'Av yer forgotten the trick 'e served me when I was in the 'ospital? 'Twouldn't do at all. 'E's one o' they sort, if you give'n a inch 'e'll take a nail.""Well, you'm Job's comforter, but all I can say is you're both gettin' upstairs and, after a bit, you'll settle down all right again. Of course Gray'll stay 'ome now, until we see what's to be done. The young folks must please their own minds, then they can't blame nobody."Sabina agreed, though with some reluctance. "Whatever be I to do without 'er?""You needn't trouble yerself about that. Richbell shall come down in the mornin' and light yer fire and get the breakfast. Iss, and while I think of't, Tom say you must sure to come up to Hember to spend Christmas. He'll fetch yer 'isself. The Constantines are comin', and we shall be all together; and by then, please God, I 'ope Leadville'll be settled down.""I should like that very much." Her face brightened at the thought of the welcoming faces and the cheer. "I'm sure 'tis good of 'ee to think about it and I'll bring up something with me. 'Tis years since we've spent Christmas together.""My dear, 'tis more'n ten years ago. Now, 'av you told Leadville about Gray?""I said to'n 'They're courtin' an'll be married very soon an' I expect they'll come 'ere to live.'""What did he say about it, then?""'E give a nasty grunt-like, 'e did; still 'e'll get over that. To-morrow I'll tell'n of 't; but I don't feel I could bear any more to-day.""Well, to-morrow'll do."As she spoke, Byron opened the linhay door. The dancing flames illumined the low-browed room sufficiently, for him to see the two women seated one on each side of the hearth; and with a short mutter of greeting he walked over to the window-bench. "Who brought they groceries back?""I did," said Mrs. Tom."Is Gray come back then?""Gray? She idn't comin' back. Me and S'bina 've made arrangements for Richbell to come in 'er place."He had suspected the women were plotting against him. He had been conscious of their intangible opposition and a spasm of hatred took him by the throat. He shook in the grip of it. "Why?"Mrs. Tom was resolved that there should be no ill-blood between Hember and Wastralls and her reply was non-committal. "She do dearly love 'er Aunt S'bina but she want to be 'ome.""She'll soon be back 'ere," asserted Byron."She's very grateful for all your kindness but she'd rather live 'ome with me for a bit.""I don't like changes and I won't 'av them.""Dear me," said Mrs. Tom placidly, "won't is a big word!" She turned to the figure in the wicker cone as if, having disposed of one matter, she were ready for another. "Shall I put they groceries in the cupboard for 'ee, S'bina?"Leadville had risen from his seat. They had taken Gray from him and they meant to keep her away. Would she be a consenting party to their scheme? He feared she might, yet if she only knew! Mrs. Tom, tranquil, occupied with household thoughts, seemed to the angry man to possess a tremendous, terrifying power. She could make Gray inaccessible and she would."We want 'er 'ere," and his harsh voice shook so that Mrs. Tom, aware of him out of the corner of an eye, could not but pity him."I knaw 'tis very good of 'ee to make so much fuss of her," she returned, pushing back her chair, "but just now she'd rather be 'ome."Through the turmoil of his fears and hopes Leadville heard his wife's easy, "You can put they things away if you like, Isolda; but leave out the tin of boot-polish for I know we want one."They could talk of groceries and boot-polish! He was astounded at their lack of understanding. A man might be suffering the pains of hell and they would still be occupied with trifles. With an effort which set the blood drumming in his ears he forced himself to sit down. Behind him in the thickness of the wall was the bench and above it the many-paned window, with a geranium on the inner ledge. The kitchen table stood against this bench and, as Leadville sank back he gripped the stout edge, putting into the clutch the passion or his disappointment, his revolt. The women moved about, pouring sugar and currants into jars, filling the bin with flour, folding up bags and paper. The murmur of their casual talk filled the air—their talk of the markets and the shops, of prices and of people! Murmur of women's voices is the breeze in the tree-tops; murmur of men's, the sea on the beaches, the sea at night! Leadville heard as one a great way off hears a familiar sound. He heard and gradually the gale of his impatience ceased to blow. He was no longer occupied with the soft movements of the women, no longer exasperated by their intangible opposition. He had turned from the latter as from a thing of little moment, and in the depths of his spirit had found enlightenment.Take Gray from him, would they?He understood at last that Mrs. Rosevear and Jim were not his chief enemies. The person who stood between him and the realization of his dreams was Sabina. She had withheld Wastralls; now, by merely living, she blocked his path to Gray.CHAPTER XII"I've asked Gray to get Raby Gregor to come down and alter trolly a bit. I've thrived a bit since I lost me laigs.""Good sign that.""Shows I'm in better 'ealth, still I don't like bein' so fat. I've 'ad to 'av Aunt Louisa alter all my clothes and if Raby Gregor takes a long time to make trolly bigger, I shan't be able to get about for goodness knows 'ow long.""Well, I should think Mrs. Bate 'ud come in for a day or two to 'elp yer. I shouldn't 'av trolly done till after Christmas, if you do you won't be able to come up to our place."Leadville, sitting engrossed in secret thought, had had a withering effect upon the women's talk. It lost spontaneity, it grew spasmodic and, as soon as the last tin was on the shelf, Mrs. Tom said she must go home."I'll go out as far as the gate with yer," Sabina had answered eagerly. After the hot kitchen it would be pleasant to have a breath of air from the sea, pleasant also to finish their chat. The flags being level it was an easy run but the gate marked the end of the journey. From it the ground fell away to the sandy commons covered with grey spire-grass, which had given the place its name. The Wastralls had been bare blown sand, but the stiff spire held the ridges from shifting and on its heels had come bright lady's-fingers and silver-weed, coarse herbage and, in depressions, the thick yellow moss. Sabina found it rested her, after the dark confinement, the depressing influence of the house, to look across the commons. The sand was piled in fantastic bulwarks but between these wind-formed bastions and ditches glimmered a white unrest of tides.The short winter's day was drawing to a close. The sun had sunk below Dark Head and the black shadow of the cliff had fallen on Wastralls. Grey in the dip of the grey land, it lay like a rock; but unlike a rock it was hollow and the many chambers were full of echoes from the past. Above the eastern hills a vague brightness gave promise of the moon and the women, pausing by the egg-crowned gateposts, looked up the road to where Hember windows were aglow. Their thoughts had run before them and they fancied they could hear faint sounds of voices and laughter."They will keep it up to-night," said Mrs. Tom and with a kiss bundled off down the lane. She was returning, full of pleasant anticipations to a merry circle—a circle which on her appearance would make her affectionately welcome. With the five girls it was always 'Mother!' with Tom too.She had not taken many steps before the contrast between what she was leaving and that to which she was hastening, brought her to a standstill. Her heart misgave her."S'bina!" she called to the lonely figure, motionless by the gate. "S'bina!""Well, what is it?""Would you like for Richbell to come down to-night?"In the kitchen Leadville could hear the high-pitched question and reply."Spoil 'er evenin'? My dear life, I wouldn't think of it. Don't you worry. I shall get on all right.""I don't like to feel that you are all alone." She knew Sabina would not have welcomed a reference to her helplessness."Now don't 'ee think about me, go and enjoy yourself."Mrs. Tom hesitated for a moment. At the few merrymakings of the countryside Sabina, jovial and buxom, had been a welcome guest; but, since her accident, the difficulty of getting about had kept her at home. Mrs. Tom decided she must be persuaded to go out more, that a pony must be got for her and the trolly adapted. That Leadville would be violently opposed to such a proceeding, that he would object to his wife's making a 'laughing-stock of herself,' did not weigh with Mrs. Tom.More than once that evening when the young people, singing the old hymns to the old tunes were gathered about the harmonium, the good woman's thoughts returned to the friend of her youth. What a fine woman Sabina had been, putting them all in the shade yet unaware of it and what happy times they had had. She remembered childhood's days and how often she had waited at the cross-roads for Sabina, so that they might walk the length of the way together. The fish-seller's daughter would bring a pasty for her school dinner and there being nine at home, it was generally more pastry than meat; but Sabina had supplemented it with red apples and cold sausages and other delectable foods. Sabina had also supplemented the other's wardrobe, perhaps even her prospects.Mrs. Tom, thinking of the lonely figure at the gate, was glad her own days were passed at Hember, in rooms that led out of each other and were crowded with children. Wastralls, silent and old, depressed her. Not all the fires Sabina lighted could warm its bones and do away with the faint but pervading smell of mould. Life that had been thinned to ghostliness, drifted through the passages; and the rooms lay in a brooding hush. She thought of the place with a dim prevision, too dim for her to grasp, a prevision of calamity."Somebody digging my grave!" she said and drew nearer to the fire.The wind which blew in gusts, dropping now and again into a deceitful lull, sent a cold breath up the valley and Sabina, lingering by the gate, drew the shawl closer about her shoulders. The shadow that rested on Wastralls, a shadow to which she was as a rule wholesomely indifferent, had grown a little, grown till it included her. Though her perceptive faculty was slight, she was in no hurry to leave the clean sanity, the freshness of the night.Above the black oblong of the mill the rim of the moon was showing golden, that wonderful West-country moon, which hangs, a clear lamp of light, far above cloud and mist. The beams falling across the yard, across the ricks, had not yet reached Wastralls. The house stood withdrawn below the hills and, for the first time, Sabina felt her home to be remote from the warm friendliness of the world. She saw it that night approximately as it appeared to others, a place cut off by its situation. The valley being far from the main highway, strangers were unaware of it. The road through, led to nothing but the teeth of the devouring sea and, as the hamlet of Cottages was the most cheerful spot in Trevorrick, so Wastralls was the most lonely and the most lost. Hember windows were always aglow. The sun found them by day and the moon by night. They glowed from within, from the fires of driftwood and sea-coal, from lamps swinging under the dark rafters, from the fires of life. Sabina, reluctantly returning to the house, could not but contrast the light and music of Hember, its continual coming and going, with the dark desolation, the stagnant peace of Wastralls. Never had it been otherwise. Her earliest recollections were of long hours when, her father being at the Dolphin, the servant would take advantage and be 'walking out.' The child, given the run of the empty rooms and left to her own devices, had peopled the place with imaginary figures. Even at this distance of time she could recall their 'names and attributes—Tinkle Minkle who was black and made of sugar, Creekuk and Clokuk the eiderdown men, and Tinkle Farg who, still more absurd, had been 'shy with a buffalo!' Naturally social she had liked to imagine a face at every window, children playing under the 'grubby elms' of the avenue and among the animals in the yard. She had looked forward to the time when she should be grown up and married. "One child is a misfortune," she had told her father at the ripe age of ten, "I'm going to 'ave lots when I marry. I'm going to full the rooms."The sound of a harmonium came to her through the stillness, but so faint was it she could hardly distinguish the tune. At Hember they were singing the familiar hymns in which all could join. The sound drew the listening woman. How often when weary of imaginary companions had she run up the lane and joined her cousins at their play! Hember had been a bright spot in her life. All that she knew of sewing and housewifery, her aunt had taught her; and Tom had wanted to marry her, yes—Tom and Constantine. Poor old Constantine, he had tried his best. But Tom, the rascal, Tom had been looking two ways at once. She sighed, the gusty sigh of a stout middle-aged woman who wishes the hot cake of youthful joys, with its plums and its citron and its spice, was once more whole in her hand.A puff of wind, increasing the volume of sound, enabled Sabina to recognize the hymn. She could almost see the happy group, Isolda knitting in her chair by the range, Tom opposite to her and, about the harmonium, the bright heads and smiling faces of the girls. Ah, if only one of them had been born to herself! She, who had been going to 'full the rooms,' had had neither the full quiver nor the faithful mate; she had had, as she realized at last, nothing in all her life but hope; and from her, time had stolen, even that which she had.In the kitchen, absorbed in brooding thought, Byron, a thicker shadow in the growing gloom, was awaiting her return. Her mind, from wandering far afield, circled to the present, to the slight repugnance she felt at entering the house. She was not a 'nervy' woman, indeed, in a countryside peculiarly susceptible to the so-called supernatural, had been known to declare, "Out at all times, night and day, and never see nothing worse than myself." Her unwillingness to go back, an unwillingness which, in truth, was but another of the warnings which had been tolling like death-bells all the day, seemed to her foolish."'Tis owin' that we've been bad friends for so long," she said. "I'm feelin' awkward as tho' 'e'd been a stranger. The sooner I take an' go in the better."The door of the glass porch stood wide in a yawn of blackness, a blackness so thick that Mrs. Byron felt as if she were pushing her way in against a resistance intangible and, on the whole, yielding but which could yet be felt. Afraid of what might be lurking in the depths of that gloom she forced herself to move noisily and, making a greater effort, to break the silence."'Tis darker 'ere than 'tis in the yard," she said, thinking of the moon, and the pale flood it was pouring over meadow and common, over the nestling farms, over every place but the dark corner in which her home lay hid; contrasting the black and silver of the night with this brooding hush.She put her hand on the shelf to find the matches. Once the lamp was lighted, once its cheery beams had driven out the dark, she would be more at ease. In a hurry to finish her work, Gray however, had forgotten to fill the brass receptacle with oil and Mrs. Byron was faced with a domestic problem. To manoeuvre the trolly sufficiently close to the wall would be difficult. Nevertheless it did not occur to her to ask Leadville's help and he, sitting motionless by the window, did not offer it."Strange 'ow I feel I must keep on craikin'," she thought, as, at last successful, she trundled off to the linhay. "'Tis just like Leadville 'ad now comed in and I must talk to'n. I dunno when I felt so whisht.""We 'aven't got very much paraffin left," she said aloud as she returned with the lamp. "Jim didn't bring any. I dare say we got enough for to-night though, we don't burn much.""Where's Jim to?" asked Leadville suddenly."Couldn't get a bit of coal," said Mrs. Byron, hanging the lamp in its bracket and trying to conceal the fact that his unexpected utterance had jarred her unruly nerves. "'Awken 'adn't a bit, but the boat is expected in to-night so Jim'll 'av to go in to-morrow and fetch it.""Where's 'e to?" persisted Leadville.Sabina held that if no fuel were thrown upon a fire, that fire must die. "'Ow d'yer think I knaw?""Is 'e to 'Ember?""Well, where else should 'e be, seein'..."The man's deep chest lifted and fell. "Seein'," he interrupted fiercely, "as Tom wish for'm to be there, seein' as 'is wife wish it...""'Is—'is wife?" stammered Sabina."Don't Isolda wish it? You know she do; but my li'l bird don't wish it. I don't believe she do."The blood, which had drained out of the woman's face, returned with a rush. She opened her lips but found herself voiceless and gasping. "Don't say like that, Leadville," she whispered at last. "Don't 'ee, don't 'ee say it—not to me."The man threw back his head and, as if unable in any other way to express his feelings, broke into a laugh. "You!" he said. "You!"Sabina turned the trolly handle, pushing it blindly out of the room. She was running away as a man runs from licking, climbing flames. She could not yield, could not knuckle under, but she could retreat until strong enough to resume the struggle. The tears were running down her face as she turned into the linhay, but they were tears forced from her by pain. Like the child in the story she could have said, "It is my eyes that's cryin', not me."For behind the wall of her tired and suffering body was her indomitable spirit.

CHAPTER X

Beyond Wastralls rose a line of black cliffs culminating in the high ground of Dark Head and, towards them, Leadville turned. No roads crossed these solitudes. Sheep cropped the fine herbage, sea-gulls built on the inaccessible ledges, tumuli and earthworks showed that man too had once sheltered here. Far inland an occasional grey homestead, in its nest of farm-buildings, could be discerned, while in clear weather the daymark was visible on Stepper Point. Otherwise the eye was given only the wide spaces of sky and sea and earth.

On the storm which had strewn the coast with wreckage had followed a land wind; and this had brought in the weed with which the coast-dwellers manure their sandy fields. The sea, in big unquiet rollers, fell heavily against the walls and islands of rock. It was dark with the slippery oreweed and, when the tide went out, the coves and bays would be ankle-deep in shining olive-brown masses. In that treeless wind-swept land however, the people look to the sea-harvest for more than weed. To the beaches drift beams that can be split into gate shivers; hatches, which put together, make a reasonable pig's house; chests and spars and miscellaneous wreckage. From cottage and hamlet the folks converge upon the coast and, at any other time, Byron would have stopped above the nearest sandy cove to shout down an offer for some of the piles of wood. Now he strode by, unconscious of the tiny carts being filled with planks and boxes, of the little figures intent on their grim work of salvage. The man was fleeing from the intolerable revelation that had been thrust upon him. He was closing his ears, his mind, his heart, seeking to delay the inevitable moment when he must give heed; yet with him, in the depths of his being, was carrying that from which he fled.

So obsessed was he with the desire to get away, to put space between him and that terrible prophetic voice, that he did not realize his solitudes had been invaded. He pressed on, crossing cliff-faces and climbing steeps. The crags, the wide prospect, the sea-unrest were familiar to him, this waif and foreigner who had come up out of the deep and could claim no place as home, no human being as of his blood. He was as safe among the crags as if he had been born to wings. The people, labouring far below, saw the grey figure on the heights and craned their necks to watch his perilous progress; and the salving of a good ship's bones went on more slowly because Leadville Byron, on a ledge six inches wide and cut away underneath, a ledge of black and crumbling slate, was risking a possession dear to no one but himself.

The man was coming to Dark Head as a hurt child rushes blindly to its mother. Hither had he fled after every difference with Sabina and here had he found a vastness, a changelessness, an impersonal peace upon which he could rest his little and tortured soul. His trouble was greater now. He was in the grip of powers which, if he could not escape from them, might break him. By climbing peaks on which cormorants had nested in a confidence hitherto secure, by ploughing through deep sands and up the slippery shale, by crazy leaps and a wild expenditure of force, he tried to exhaust himself. By so doing he might avoid, not only knowledge, but the sinister possibilities of his nature.

Dark Head is a narrow peninsula of rock which stands knee-deep in water. A green mane of turf ripples to the black edge and Leadville, scourged across the waste, came at last to a softness of thick untrodden grass. This was the world's end and behind lay the amazing cruelty of life. The great spaces were clean and they were sweet. The man strode to the sloping edge but, because he was not yet ready to surrender his atom of consciousness, drew back. For a moment he stood, looking vacantly across the breathing sea, then turned and flung himself upon the bed the ages had prepared. The grass, wind-swept and deep, yielded a little, closing about his heavy figure like the displaced water of a pool.

On a rock below, an oyster-catcher chattered disapproval but the gulls and shyer cormorants came back to their resting-places. The man was harmless and after the storm they must make the most of the sunshine. They stood about, preening themselves in the red light and above the southern hills but near them, the sun made the half-circle of the sky.

In moments of overwhelming emotion Byron, when the strain grew too intense, had hitherto passed into another state of consciousness. The sound of hammering had as it were, opened a door, beyond which was a bewildering peace. Forgetfulness had fallen on him like a garment and when he came back it was, always, to begin afresh. Sabina's words however, though they roused him to a frenzy of feeling, had not had the usual effect. He had not been able to escape.

Drowned in an agony that was elemental he lay on the cliff-top, supine and motionless; Sabina's bitter revelation had been like the pouring of vitriol over his heart. Loving for the first time in his life, loving with the passion of a highly emotional temperament, the hopelessness of his love had been thrust suddenly upon him. A disappointment so elemental, so profound, put him beside himself. His instinct was, somehow, to escape the ultimate pangs. He had fled before the flood, fled from himself, scrambled and sobbed himself across the cliffs until he came to rest, deep in the deep grass of the headland.

His exhaustion was so great that for some time he lay supine as the wreckage on the sands below. As the moments passed, however, consciousness began to return and with it, through the darkness of his mind flitted unhappy thought, a greyness here and there, a vague suspicion. By degrees Sabina's face detached itself from the background. He saw it resentful and defiant and, tired as he was, his gorge rose. The woman was for ever in his road. She had withheld Wastralls from him, now she would come between him and Gray. He saw again the strong lined face, the unlovely trunk; saw them with a dislike which had for some time been growing in intensity. Since her accident Sabina had been to him a death's-head, a creature which, without the power to enjoy, yet clung to its possessions; which, though its grave was yawning, persisted in dragging a repulsive mortality about the earth. A person with any decency of feeling, would have lain her down under the turf and slept the good sleep; but Sabina was neither dead nor alive. That trolly! He cursed it for the hideous thing it was and for the unseemly activity of which it was the symbol. He would have liked to break it in pieces. He would have enjoyed the wrecking and scattering.

Circumstances had put Sabina in opposition to him and had given her the upper hand; but if it came to a struggle he did not fear the issue.

Sitting up on his bed of grass he stared out to sea and, on the horizon, the ships went along and along, far off blacknesses, dim trails of smoke. He did not see them, was indeed unconscious of his material surroundings, but his mind was beginning to work. Behind Sabina's denying face he sensed the opposition of Gray's mother. Hitherto he had regarded Mrs. Tom as a friendly circumstance; but he knew she was shrewd and, in a small way, ambitious. Jim Rosevear of Treketh would be a satisfactory match. He had the promise of a good farm and was a steady chap. And Gray? Would she take her mother's penny shrewdness for wisdom, marry a young man for his youth, do the commonplace thing?

For the first time since the blow had fallen, Byron allowed himself to think of Gray driving away from him with Jim Rosevear. Suffocating with rage, he fell forward again upon the grass.

Such passion as that of Leadville Byron is the creative force at its human strongest and the man who feels it, recognizes in it something of the divine. He cannot doubt that he will be able to inspire in its object an equal flame; and he seeks, with a persistence worthy of its sacred object, for his opportunity. Byron had the most precious thing in the world to offer Gray and nothing, not her mother, not the hampering circumstance of a wife, not even her girlish preference for another man, would be allowed to stand in his way.

Noon found him by the yard gate of Wastralls. He had drifted back across the waste because the way was familiar to his wandering feet; and he reached the farm as the kitchen clock began to strike. The familiar sound, hoarse and creaking as the voice of an old person, carried across the sunshiny yard and the man stood to count the strokes. Twelve o'clock! Where had the morning gone? He rubbed his eyes like one waking out of sleep and, as he did so, became aware that a horse had been tethered to the staple and that beyond the horse, was a gig. The varnish of this threw off a hundred cheerful reflections while the buckles and bosses of the harness were of a highly polished brass. The glitter and hard cheeriness of the whole were like the sharp gleams of frost on a sunshiny winter morning. Byron recognized the gig as belonging to Dr. Derek of Stowe. Whenever other business brought him into the parish, the doctor was apt to drop in for a chat with his late patient. He liked her, but he had also a professional reason for coming. Her recovery had surprised him, for such vitality is unusual; and he meant to keep an eye on the case.

The farmer hesitated for a moment. He was not in a mood for talk. Nevertheless the force which had already set his feet upon a hidden road drove him forward and he took his accustomed way across the now slushy yard, straight to the porch. Clean blue flagstones ran by the hedge-gripe, turning at right angles along the side of the house; but, as Byron had once contemptuously said, "They were all right for cats and women, he wasn't afraid of a little mud."

As he opened the door the appetizing smell of new bread rushed out. Sabina had been baking and, on the side-table, stood a row of crusty loaves flanked by lightly piled splits while behind was enough white cake and saffron cake to carry the household over Christmas.

Byron stood for a moment, his bloodshot eyes scanning the place. The kitchen being a dark room, a new-comer required time to forget the sun. As his pupils widened, however, he perceived ensconced in Old Squire's big chair, a little man, rosy-gilled and grey-haired. This man was eating, with an air of pleasant enjoyment, a thunder-and-lightning split and, beside him on a stool, stood a cup of tea. Though Dr. Derek had been out all night he looked as if fresh from his bath; and no one could have supposed that this snack of new bread was in place of the breakfast he had missed. Opposite him, her unwieldy bulk seeming about to overflow the wicker cone of the trolley, sat Mrs. Byron, a quiet somewhat distrait figure. The contrivance had been made when she was a comparatively normal shape. Since then she had grown stouter, 'gone abroad'; and a new and roomier cone was becoming imperative. She looked tired after her morning's bread-making and her face had lost its jovial look. Over it a breath had passed, dulling the gaiety, wiping away even content, and the breath was one to which all of us, unhappily, can fit a name.

Dr. Derek looked up at the farmer's entrance. "Just come from Curvithick," said he, "and thought I'd look in on my way home."

Curvithick Farm, the mistress of which had been cheerfully expecting her thirteenth child, lay on the other side of the main road at the head of the valley. The land marched with that of Constantine Rosevear. "Maggie Martin 'av got a baker's dozen now then," said Mrs. Byron but she spoke without her usual interest in her neighbour's concerns.

"She's done better than that," and Dr. Derek helped himself to another split. "She's got twins!"

"Twins? My dear sawl and body, whatever they gwine do now with so many childer?"

"Twelve last night and fourteen this morning!" Dr. Derek looked pleased. He held that a declining birth-rate meant the opportunity of his country's enemies and was himself the father of five sons and four daughters. He was wont to declare blandly that he lived in the West because the women there had, on the whole, a sense of their duty to the empire.

"Boy and cheeld?" pursued Mrs. Byron.

"Yes, one of each kind, a pigeon pair." He beamed at her through round glasses, the rims of which had a yellow gleam, and passed his cup for more tea. "Your splitters are excellent, Mrs. Byron—but you," he shook his head, "what have you been doing with yourself?"

Sabina glanced at her husband who, after greeting the doctor, had seated himself heavily on the window-bench. The family physician has slipped gradually into the place of the family confessor and, if Byron had not been present, she might have taken Dr. Derek to a small extent into her confidence. As it was, she acknowledged her state without offering to explain it. "I don't feel very special. I be all any'ow to-day."

Not having seen her for some time Dr. Derek did not suspect that her wan looks and cheerless air were what a day had brought forth. Remembering the keen hearty cross-country woman of former days and contrasting her with this dulled stay-at-home, he found support for his theory that the amazing rally after her accident had been the last flicker of a strong vitality. She had gone downhill since he saw her last.

"You've been doing more than you should," and a glance at the array of loaves emphasized his words. "That heart of yours won't stand much, Mrs. Byron. A little extra strain, you know, and you'll find yourself in Queer Street."

Leadville who had been staring down at the gun which still lay across the table, turned his heavy eyes on the doctor. "'Tis no good tellin' 'er to stop, for she will carry on as long as she mind to. I tell 'er I'll do the out-o'-door work for 'er, but 'er won't listen, so 'tis so well I leave it drop."

The little bright doctor glanced from wife to husband and back again. With neat compact theories about everything, he held that Sabina's childlessness was the key to the situation. "Here's a man ready and willing to take the work off your shoulders! Why not make use of him? He'd save you all sorts of worries."

"I reckon he would," and Sabina covered bitterness with a smile. "He'd never say nothing about 'em. He'd keep 'em all to 'isself."

"Considering," retorted the doctor crisply, "that you have by no means regained your strength, surely that would be a good thing?"

Sabina shook her head. He did not understand and she could not explain. "I'd rather ride my own 'obby-'arse," she said vaguely.

"Don't overtax your strength then or you'll be sorry for it." After all, whether she should wear herself out quickly or rot by the chimney corner, was her affair.

Leadville withdrew his fascinated gaze from the gun. "Didn't I 'ear you say, last time you was 'ere, she ought to 'ave a operation?"

"I did, it wouldn't be a serious one, a matter of a week or so in hospital. What do you think, Mrs. Byron? To have it done would make you much more comfortable. Stronger too, I fancy."

But Sabina's recollection of the days after her accident, those days of pain and discomfort when she had hung conscious and half consenting on the edge of the void, was still clear. She wondered why Leadville should be showing this sudden interest on her concerns. Did he wish to get her out of the way again, so that he might be up to his tricks? Or did he think he still had a chance with Gray? She could smile to herself over his infatuation. It would not be long now before he realized its hopelessness.

"I don't like that old knife business," she said. "I'll live as long as I can and then I must die."

"This is hardly worth calling an operation."

"Thank you, doctor, I'll stay where I'm to."

"A wilful woman!" he said, rising. "Well, then, I must send you a tonic and Byron'll see that you take it."

"He's likely to," she said.

"Now come, Mrs. Byron, can't have you saying things like that. The person who is really interested in your getting better is your husband. You don't know what he was like when you were in hospital."

"I think," said she, with a little twitch of the lips, "as I can make a guess. But thank 'ee all the same, doctor."

Picking up his gun, Byron followed the doctor out of the house. The farmer might prefer to strike a path for himself but Dr. Derek had a feline dislike of dirt and wet. His patent-leather boots, small and pointed, twinkled in the sunshine as he stepped along the blue flagstones, and through his bright round glasses, his steel-blue eye shot an inquiring gleam at the man, padding heavily at his side.

Against that neat personality, Leadville's big frame showed rough and heavy. He was the hulking unshaven countryman, powerful as a bear and with a bear's light but ungainly walk. He did not attempt to accommodate his stride to the other's city gait but lounged along somewhere in his neighbourhood.

"The missis 'aven't been 'erself lately," Byron volunteered as they came up to the gate, "an' I wish you could make her do as you say. P'raps, next time you come, you'll try and persuade 'er?"

With his plans not yet matured, one way out of his difficulties was as good as another. If Sabina could be persuaded to return to the hospital for a time, he would only have to deal with Mrs. Tom.

The doctor climbed into the gig. "'Tis no good, Byron. When she says 'No' there's no moving her."

The farmer's vague gaze was fixed on the glittering harness but his heart sank. "I should like to have everything done that can be done," he growled in his deep voice.

"I know, my good fellow," comforted the other. "Well, don't let her do more than you can help and keep her diet as light as possible. Not too much pork, you know, and no heavy suppers."

"She won't be said by me," returned Byron.

"Well, well, one does the best one can and there's no more to be said. Wonderful case! Never thought she'd turn that first corner; yet, there she is, doing a day's work. It's a pity she's growing so stout. When I think of what she was!" With his small well-kept hands, the polished nails of which scattered tiny reflections of the light, he made a gesture of pity and regret. "The strength of a man, and now——"

Byron stepped back from the gig. "And now," he said grimly as the cob began to move, "now, she's a proper wreck."

CHAPTER XI

An hour later Byron came into the kitchen carrying a small dead seal. Climbing down by a little treacherous path, he had seen it lying at the mouth of a cave and for some minutes had stood to watch it. By means of an inner membrane it was clearing first one nostril of sea-water and then the other; and he had shot it while it was still unaware of him.

"What's become o' the furnace?" he asked. "I told George to leav'n by the hedge-gripe."

Sabina, though a farmer, preserved some feminine traits and in particular a love of tidiness. She was as clean as a cat and to see her yard churned up by the hoofs of the cattle, and the farm implements at the mercy of the weather, troubled her. The rusty furnace, an outdoor stove used for farm purposes and, in particular, to try out seal-oil, had been an eyesore and she had had it removed.

"'Tis out in the bullocks' house."

Leadville 'damned 'er up in the 'eaps for interferin' with 'is things'; but he spoke, not harshly so much as absent-mindedly.

"I'll 'av the place as I've a mind to," returned Sabina placidly. Her husband had often raged against the equable good nature which suffered without malice, as a mother surfers the unreasonableness of her child. Now he only muttered vaguely as he set the gun in its thongs over the door.

"Where's Dick to?"

"Drayin' oreweed." Sabina, who had manoeuvred the trolly close to the fender, had been nodding in the agreeable warmth. An indoor life had made her susceptible to cold and this afternoon she felt tired and ill. The emotions rather than the work of the day had exhausted her, and she had thought to snatch a few minutes' rest before Mrs. Tom, whom she was expecting to call on the way back from Stowe, should arrive.

"You'll catch afire one of these days if you keep on gruddlin' so," said Byron, with a fathering wish. Sabina could not follow his thought, in fact she mistook it for solicitude. It was long since he had shown any interest in her welfare. Could the doctor's visit, revealing that she was in a poor way, have brought her husband to a better mind? Like the rest of us she could not believe that it takes all sorts to make a world and, in the eyes of others, saw consequently only the reflection of herself. She looked hopefully at Leadville and at once he turned away, hanging his big head and balancing from one foot to the other. His mind was stirring, as the sand crawls under an army of ants. He felt the movement, was perhaps vaguely conscious of the direction in which he was going, but could not see the end; not yet.

A cart laden with glistening weed, wet and olive-brown, had come up from the beach. As Leadville lounged out of the porch he saw that Dick Bennett was the driver. The weed had been left by the receding tide, left ankle-deep in every sandy bay, strewn over the black rocks; a generous provision, enough for every potato-patch in the parish. Nor did the glossy slippery weed constitute the whole of the sea-harvest. Manure for the fields, wood for the kitchen fires and, what that wood had held—oranges and shelled walnuts, crates and bags and boxes—had floated in during the night. The sea had been good to the lonely dwellers on her coasts; and she had offered, in her own gruesome fashion, a Christmas gift.

"The furnace, maister? I knaw where 'tis to. Leave me empt up this and I'll get it for yer."

When the stove, red with rust, had been reinstated in the shelter of the hedge, Byron took up the limp body and began to prepare it.

"That's every bit of coal we got, till Jim bring 'ome some from Stowe," said Bennett as he poured a shovelful of round knobs, which had been salvaged from the sea, on to the furze bushes, and set them alight.

"There's plenty of wood there," grunted the other, "so we must burn that."

"I should think 'twas time Jim 'ud be back." The hind was a little mournful man with a grievance. He had seen Jim drive off that morning, in his Sunday suit, with a pretty girl for company; and he had felt that he himself, older in service, should have been sent. "But these young chaps, when they go an errand, they take good care they don't come 'ome very quick. Course," he added grudgingly, "'e can spend the day in Stowe without any trouble."

"Oh, shut yer mouth," cried the other savagely. The man's grumbling chatter had obliged him to remember that Jim Rosevear was with Gray. Till then, he had succeeded in keeping the thought of their proximity at the back of his mind. It had been difficult, but he had done it. Dick had made it no longer possible and the day in Stowe unrolled itself before his jealous eyes—the drive in, a drive of five good Cornish miles, the drive behind Lady who, though a good mare, was slow: the stall in the market where Rosevear would set up the trestles, help the girl arrange to the best advantage the eggs, the poultry, the pounds and half pounds of butter: the meeting after market on the Quay where, the wagon being loaded with coal and flour, they would leave Lady by the warehouse while they hurried from shop to shop, she buying and he carrying the parcels: finally the long drive home in the windy dusk. Leadville tortured himself with the thought of that drive, of Gray's softness and nearness, of the little face between the fur of cap and necklet, the little smiling face....

He had been skinning the seal. Much as less powerful men skin a rabbit, he had been tearing the coat, grey and damp, from the smooth pale body. A stone wall, five foot broad at the base and crowned with tamarisk bushes, is what in Cornwall is called a hedge. It is at least a shelter from the wind, and Dick Bennett had been careful to set the furnace in a lew corner. The furze bushes burnt with a crackle and above them the sea-coal smouldered slowly in large red lumps. The air in the yard was fresh but still, and through it, a warm reek, rose the smell of blood. It rose to Byron's nostrils, affecting him as it affects the children of the wild, rousing in him that primitive, long-forgotten, but deathless passion which claims survival as its right and, battling before the hosts that wait to be called across the threshold, stakes its life. Between his hands hung the limp body and he wrenched at the skin in a growing fury of impatience. His blunt dark-skinned fingers were foul and, as the sealskin slipped he noticed that a trickle of thickening blood had run down his palm on to the wrist. He stared at this from between narrowed eyelids for a second, then, stooping his big head, licked it away. The taste of it, salt on his tongue, further affected an equilibrium already unstable; and the beast which slumbers behind the arras of our civilization, which stirs with a faint growl at every shaking of that decent cover, that savage incalculable beast of the long past, awoke. The blood-lust rose in him. He forgot the presence of the bullock-man, the time, the place, everything but a sudden overmastering need. Something, he could not remember what, had defied him and it was of paramount necessity that this something should be done away with, destroyed, ground into the earth. To rend and crush had become obligatory, the vindication of his claim to live. The poor body of the seal was gone and in its place was an enemy who had been given into his hands. He caught up the carcass, seeing not it, but all he hated, all he was burning to destroy and the dismemberment degenerated from honest butchery into an orgy. Dick Bennett stood aghast. In the master's eye was a wildness which made the hind thankful he was even more inconspicuous than small. For once his querulousness was hushed. "The old devil pulled and dragged and 'acked as though 'e was mad," was his description afterwards of the scene. "'E fetched 'is spite out on the poor creature. It made me fairly sick to see 'im."

Bit by bit the crushed fragments of bloody flesh were cast into the cauldron; but as long as bone or sinew held together, Byron tore at the body with unabated passion. The last lump was flung in with the same fury of effort as the first; but as soon as his hands were empty, the mood passed. The sweat was on his forehead, his knees were knocking together and he was trembling, but he seemed unconscious of his condition. For some minutes he stood by the furnace staring vacantly into the bubbling depths but by degrees his breath came more evenly, and the suavity of successful effort began to wash over his tortured mind.

Daunted by his master's incomprehensible ferocity, the hind waited in the background; and, behind him again, the chickens picked and scratched and on the lichened roof the pigeons balanced in the sun. Byron was watching the formation of a large iridescent bubble. His eye dwelt languidly on the red and green transparence, on the smaller bubbles hurrying to its side; but as the film burst and disappeared he pushed the stirring-stick into the labourer's hand with a deep, "Mind you don't leave'n burn," and swung away. He was come fully to himself, a weary and a hungry self and he remembered that the dinner hour was long past.

The outer door of the linhay opened on to a paved drying-yard and, as he passed through, he stooped his head under a sagging cord with the practical man's comment that a new prop was needed. Trifles, common-place and wholesome, were distracting his mind. He felt cold, noticed that what little wind there was had gone round to the north, noticed too that above Dark Head the sky was flaming with a sunset of good augury. The short December day being so near its close, the linhay was dark; but the hungry man knew where to lay his hand on a rabbit pasty. He had shot the rabbits and brought them in—to Gray; and now Gray was—where? Behind him lay the old house with its many chambers and not one of them harboured her. For the first time he realized that without Gray, Wastralls was but an empty shell.

In a row on the shelf stood the loaves and, beside them, on a big white dish lay the pasties. Sabina had added onion and bacon to make them appetizing, parsley to give flavour, freshly dug potatoes to hold the gravy; and all was folded in a responsible crust. Her pasties were renowned; but Byron, satisfying his hunger, did not notice the quality of the food. He was still obsessed by his vision of the empty house. The barren years, when he had paced the friendly fields as a captive paces his cage, unable either to take action or to escape, had done their work. He had supported life on a meagre hope; but he was older now, less patient, had a shorter time left him in which to enjoy. The young Samson can afford to ask riddles and play tricks, it is the ageing man who, grown desperate, brings destruction upon the people. Standing by the shelf, eating hungrily but absent-mindedly, Byron presently became conscious of voices in the kitchen. For a moment his heart beat in swift anticipation. Was Gray back? He stopped eating to listen, but the voice which had suggested that of the young girl was older and had lost some of its West-country music. He recognized it disappointedly as that of the girl's mother.

Filling himself a mug from the pitcher of milk that stood on the flags, Byron drank. If Mrs. Tom were in the kitchen the little party must have returned from Stowe, and the thought was, in a way, reassuring. Gray would be at Hember now and Rosevear would have come on to Wastralls with the mare and cart. At least they were no longer together.

Byron's thoughts dwelt fleetingly on Rosevear. Should he go back, find the fellow and send him packing? He hated the sight of that womanishly smooth face. Some day he would send his fist crashing into it, put the weight of his shoulder into the blow. If he could fell a bullock it would be child's play to spoil Rosevear's beauty, to make him so as the chap's own mother wouldn't recognize him. When Gray saw what he made of her fine sweetheart, there would be no more hesitation—Leadville could not believe it to be more than hesitation. She would turn to the man who had proved in primal fashion his right to her.

In the kitchen the women's voices rose and fell, lifting at the end in the Cornish way. Phrases and half words reached the man's ears and brought him to a distrustful consideration of them. These women, with their 'under-hauling,' their scheming, the way they 'held for each other'—what were they discussing? Him and his affairs? He fell to again on the pasty, biting into its hard crust with unnecessary force, biting indeed into more than crust and meat.

Mrs. Tom, having brought in the Christmas groceries and stacked the tins and parcels on the side-table, had settled down for a chat. The bond between the women, which like themselves was stout and workaday, had been embroidered by the years with a pattern of memories; and what can be pleasanter at the end of a winter day than to sit by a bright fire with a friend who has been tried by time? Sabina talked of her husband, of the farm, of the future.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Rosevear cheerfully, "and now the time 'as come for 'ee to make a fresh start. When Leadville knaw about Gray, 'e will 'av to rest 'is 'eart content."

Sabina stirred her tea in a meditative fashion. With a simple faith in good and evil, reward and punishment, it was puzzling to her that she who was a 'member and had gone to prayer meeting and chapel all right and been a good livin' woman,' should have had so much trouble. "I think it's a awful thing for 'e to be running after Gray, when 'e got a wife of's own?" she said. "Too bad, I do call it."

"Well, there 'tis, my dear, I 'spose 'e can't 'elp it. Men are like that, bain't they, poor old dragons? Best thing to do is to keep temptation out of's way."

"Do 'ee think so? Now I'd rather show'm as 'e can't 'av what 'e wants."

The more clear-sighted woman did not dispute the matter. Even if Sabina wanted Gray and Jim to live at Wastralls, the decision would not rest with her. Gray would not care so long as she was with Jim, but he, though good-natured and easygoing, knew his own mind. Not long since, he had been over to Gentle Jane where his aunt, receiving him warmly, had been urgent that he should live with her. He had not given a definite answer, but Mrs. Tom knew he was considering the matter.

"Better for Leadville if 'e 'ad something to take up 'is time," she said. "E's always mumpin' around the cliffs like a wandering Jew."

The wife's happy-go-lucky faith in Leadville's harmlessness did not commend itself to Mrs. Tom. She remembered the zest with which he had torn up the honeysuckle, the indifference he had shown as to whether Sabina lived or died, his moroseness since her return. They might yet have trouble with him.

"Well, 'tis 'is choice, 'e could work if 'e like; there's plenty to do, but 'e's not that way inclined."

"'E 'as got fever of lurk,Two minds to eat and none to work,"

"'E 'as got fever of lurk,Two minds to eat and none to work,"

"'E 'as got fever of lurk,

Two minds to eat and none to work,"

quoted Mrs. Tom as she helped herself to a slice of yeast-cake. "If a man got nothin' else to think about, 'e sure to get into mischief. Can't you find something for'm to do? Why don't yer let'n go to town for 'ee in an' out, and work a team sometimes?"

"'Av yer forgotten the trick 'e served me when I was in the 'ospital? 'Twouldn't do at all. 'E's one o' they sort, if you give'n a inch 'e'll take a nail."

"Well, you'm Job's comforter, but all I can say is you're both gettin' upstairs and, after a bit, you'll settle down all right again. Of course Gray'll stay 'ome now, until we see what's to be done. The young folks must please their own minds, then they can't blame nobody."

Sabina agreed, though with some reluctance. "Whatever be I to do without 'er?"

"You needn't trouble yerself about that. Richbell shall come down in the mornin' and light yer fire and get the breakfast. Iss, and while I think of't, Tom say you must sure to come up to Hember to spend Christmas. He'll fetch yer 'isself. The Constantines are comin', and we shall be all together; and by then, please God, I 'ope Leadville'll be settled down."

"I should like that very much." Her face brightened at the thought of the welcoming faces and the cheer. "I'm sure 'tis good of 'ee to think about it and I'll bring up something with me. 'Tis years since we've spent Christmas together."

"My dear, 'tis more'n ten years ago. Now, 'av you told Leadville about Gray?"

"I said to'n 'They're courtin' an'll be married very soon an' I expect they'll come 'ere to live.'"

"What did he say about it, then?"

"'E give a nasty grunt-like, 'e did; still 'e'll get over that. To-morrow I'll tell'n of 't; but I don't feel I could bear any more to-day."

"Well, to-morrow'll do."

As she spoke, Byron opened the linhay door. The dancing flames illumined the low-browed room sufficiently, for him to see the two women seated one on each side of the hearth; and with a short mutter of greeting he walked over to the window-bench. "Who brought they groceries back?"

"I did," said Mrs. Tom.

"Is Gray come back then?"

"Gray? She idn't comin' back. Me and S'bina 've made arrangements for Richbell to come in 'er place."

He had suspected the women were plotting against him. He had been conscious of their intangible opposition and a spasm of hatred took him by the throat. He shook in the grip of it. "Why?"

Mrs. Tom was resolved that there should be no ill-blood between Hember and Wastralls and her reply was non-committal. "She do dearly love 'er Aunt S'bina but she want to be 'ome."

"She'll soon be back 'ere," asserted Byron.

"She's very grateful for all your kindness but she'd rather live 'ome with me for a bit."

"I don't like changes and I won't 'av them."

"Dear me," said Mrs. Tom placidly, "won't is a big word!" She turned to the figure in the wicker cone as if, having disposed of one matter, she were ready for another. "Shall I put they groceries in the cupboard for 'ee, S'bina?"

Leadville had risen from his seat. They had taken Gray from him and they meant to keep her away. Would she be a consenting party to their scheme? He feared she might, yet if she only knew! Mrs. Tom, tranquil, occupied with household thoughts, seemed to the angry man to possess a tremendous, terrifying power. She could make Gray inaccessible and she would.

"We want 'er 'ere," and his harsh voice shook so that Mrs. Tom, aware of him out of the corner of an eye, could not but pity him.

"I knaw 'tis very good of 'ee to make so much fuss of her," she returned, pushing back her chair, "but just now she'd rather be 'ome."

Through the turmoil of his fears and hopes Leadville heard his wife's easy, "You can put they things away if you like, Isolda; but leave out the tin of boot-polish for I know we want one."

They could talk of groceries and boot-polish! He was astounded at their lack of understanding. A man might be suffering the pains of hell and they would still be occupied with trifles. With an effort which set the blood drumming in his ears he forced himself to sit down. Behind him in the thickness of the wall was the bench and above it the many-paned window, with a geranium on the inner ledge. The kitchen table stood against this bench and, as Leadville sank back he gripped the stout edge, putting into the clutch the passion or his disappointment, his revolt. The women moved about, pouring sugar and currants into jars, filling the bin with flour, folding up bags and paper. The murmur of their casual talk filled the air—their talk of the markets and the shops, of prices and of people! Murmur of women's voices is the breeze in the tree-tops; murmur of men's, the sea on the beaches, the sea at night! Leadville heard as one a great way off hears a familiar sound. He heard and gradually the gale of his impatience ceased to blow. He was no longer occupied with the soft movements of the women, no longer exasperated by their intangible opposition. He had turned from the latter as from a thing of little moment, and in the depths of his spirit had found enlightenment.

Take Gray from him, would they?

He understood at last that Mrs. Rosevear and Jim were not his chief enemies. The person who stood between him and the realization of his dreams was Sabina. She had withheld Wastralls; now, by merely living, she blocked his path to Gray.

CHAPTER XII

"I've asked Gray to get Raby Gregor to come down and alter trolly a bit. I've thrived a bit since I lost me laigs."

"Good sign that."

"Shows I'm in better 'ealth, still I don't like bein' so fat. I've 'ad to 'av Aunt Louisa alter all my clothes and if Raby Gregor takes a long time to make trolly bigger, I shan't be able to get about for goodness knows 'ow long."

"Well, I should think Mrs. Bate 'ud come in for a day or two to 'elp yer. I shouldn't 'av trolly done till after Christmas, if you do you won't be able to come up to our place."

Leadville, sitting engrossed in secret thought, had had a withering effect upon the women's talk. It lost spontaneity, it grew spasmodic and, as soon as the last tin was on the shelf, Mrs. Tom said she must go home.

"I'll go out as far as the gate with yer," Sabina had answered eagerly. After the hot kitchen it would be pleasant to have a breath of air from the sea, pleasant also to finish their chat. The flags being level it was an easy run but the gate marked the end of the journey. From it the ground fell away to the sandy commons covered with grey spire-grass, which had given the place its name. The Wastralls had been bare blown sand, but the stiff spire held the ridges from shifting and on its heels had come bright lady's-fingers and silver-weed, coarse herbage and, in depressions, the thick yellow moss. Sabina found it rested her, after the dark confinement, the depressing influence of the house, to look across the commons. The sand was piled in fantastic bulwarks but between these wind-formed bastions and ditches glimmered a white unrest of tides.

The short winter's day was drawing to a close. The sun had sunk below Dark Head and the black shadow of the cliff had fallen on Wastralls. Grey in the dip of the grey land, it lay like a rock; but unlike a rock it was hollow and the many chambers were full of echoes from the past. Above the eastern hills a vague brightness gave promise of the moon and the women, pausing by the egg-crowned gateposts, looked up the road to where Hember windows were aglow. Their thoughts had run before them and they fancied they could hear faint sounds of voices and laughter.

"They will keep it up to-night," said Mrs. Tom and with a kiss bundled off down the lane. She was returning, full of pleasant anticipations to a merry circle—a circle which on her appearance would make her affectionately welcome. With the five girls it was always 'Mother!' with Tom too.

She had not taken many steps before the contrast between what she was leaving and that to which she was hastening, brought her to a standstill. Her heart misgave her.

"S'bina!" she called to the lonely figure, motionless by the gate. "S'bina!"

"Well, what is it?"

"Would you like for Richbell to come down to-night?"

In the kitchen Leadville could hear the high-pitched question and reply.

"Spoil 'er evenin'? My dear life, I wouldn't think of it. Don't you worry. I shall get on all right."

"I don't like to feel that you are all alone." She knew Sabina would not have welcomed a reference to her helplessness.

"Now don't 'ee think about me, go and enjoy yourself."

Mrs. Tom hesitated for a moment. At the few merrymakings of the countryside Sabina, jovial and buxom, had been a welcome guest; but, since her accident, the difficulty of getting about had kept her at home. Mrs. Tom decided she must be persuaded to go out more, that a pony must be got for her and the trolly adapted. That Leadville would be violently opposed to such a proceeding, that he would object to his wife's making a 'laughing-stock of herself,' did not weigh with Mrs. Tom.

More than once that evening when the young people, singing the old hymns to the old tunes were gathered about the harmonium, the good woman's thoughts returned to the friend of her youth. What a fine woman Sabina had been, putting them all in the shade yet unaware of it and what happy times they had had. She remembered childhood's days and how often she had waited at the cross-roads for Sabina, so that they might walk the length of the way together. The fish-seller's daughter would bring a pasty for her school dinner and there being nine at home, it was generally more pastry than meat; but Sabina had supplemented it with red apples and cold sausages and other delectable foods. Sabina had also supplemented the other's wardrobe, perhaps even her prospects.

Mrs. Tom, thinking of the lonely figure at the gate, was glad her own days were passed at Hember, in rooms that led out of each other and were crowded with children. Wastralls, silent and old, depressed her. Not all the fires Sabina lighted could warm its bones and do away with the faint but pervading smell of mould. Life that had been thinned to ghostliness, drifted through the passages; and the rooms lay in a brooding hush. She thought of the place with a dim prevision, too dim for her to grasp, a prevision of calamity.

"Somebody digging my grave!" she said and drew nearer to the fire.

The wind which blew in gusts, dropping now and again into a deceitful lull, sent a cold breath up the valley and Sabina, lingering by the gate, drew the shawl closer about her shoulders. The shadow that rested on Wastralls, a shadow to which she was as a rule wholesomely indifferent, had grown a little, grown till it included her. Though her perceptive faculty was slight, she was in no hurry to leave the clean sanity, the freshness of the night.

Above the black oblong of the mill the rim of the moon was showing golden, that wonderful West-country moon, which hangs, a clear lamp of light, far above cloud and mist. The beams falling across the yard, across the ricks, had not yet reached Wastralls. The house stood withdrawn below the hills and, for the first time, Sabina felt her home to be remote from the warm friendliness of the world. She saw it that night approximately as it appeared to others, a place cut off by its situation. The valley being far from the main highway, strangers were unaware of it. The road through, led to nothing but the teeth of the devouring sea and, as the hamlet of Cottages was the most cheerful spot in Trevorrick, so Wastralls was the most lonely and the most lost. Hember windows were always aglow. The sun found them by day and the moon by night. They glowed from within, from the fires of driftwood and sea-coal, from lamps swinging under the dark rafters, from the fires of life. Sabina, reluctantly returning to the house, could not but contrast the light and music of Hember, its continual coming and going, with the dark desolation, the stagnant peace of Wastralls. Never had it been otherwise. Her earliest recollections were of long hours when, her father being at the Dolphin, the servant would take advantage and be 'walking out.' The child, given the run of the empty rooms and left to her own devices, had peopled the place with imaginary figures. Even at this distance of time she could recall their 'names and attributes—Tinkle Minkle who was black and made of sugar, Creekuk and Clokuk the eiderdown men, and Tinkle Farg who, still more absurd, had been 'shy with a buffalo!' Naturally social she had liked to imagine a face at every window, children playing under the 'grubby elms' of the avenue and among the animals in the yard. She had looked forward to the time when she should be grown up and married. "One child is a misfortune," she had told her father at the ripe age of ten, "I'm going to 'ave lots when I marry. I'm going to full the rooms."

The sound of a harmonium came to her through the stillness, but so faint was it she could hardly distinguish the tune. At Hember they were singing the familiar hymns in which all could join. The sound drew the listening woman. How often when weary of imaginary companions had she run up the lane and joined her cousins at their play! Hember had been a bright spot in her life. All that she knew of sewing and housewifery, her aunt had taught her; and Tom had wanted to marry her, yes—Tom and Constantine. Poor old Constantine, he had tried his best. But Tom, the rascal, Tom had been looking two ways at once. She sighed, the gusty sigh of a stout middle-aged woman who wishes the hot cake of youthful joys, with its plums and its citron and its spice, was once more whole in her hand.

A puff of wind, increasing the volume of sound, enabled Sabina to recognize the hymn. She could almost see the happy group, Isolda knitting in her chair by the range, Tom opposite to her and, about the harmonium, the bright heads and smiling faces of the girls. Ah, if only one of them had been born to herself! She, who had been going to 'full the rooms,' had had neither the full quiver nor the faithful mate; she had had, as she realized at last, nothing in all her life but hope; and from her, time had stolen, even that which she had.

In the kitchen, absorbed in brooding thought, Byron, a thicker shadow in the growing gloom, was awaiting her return. Her mind, from wandering far afield, circled to the present, to the slight repugnance she felt at entering the house. She was not a 'nervy' woman, indeed, in a countryside peculiarly susceptible to the so-called supernatural, had been known to declare, "Out at all times, night and day, and never see nothing worse than myself." Her unwillingness to go back, an unwillingness which, in truth, was but another of the warnings which had been tolling like death-bells all the day, seemed to her foolish.

"'Tis owin' that we've been bad friends for so long," she said. "I'm feelin' awkward as tho' 'e'd been a stranger. The sooner I take an' go in the better."

The door of the glass porch stood wide in a yawn of blackness, a blackness so thick that Mrs. Byron felt as if she were pushing her way in against a resistance intangible and, on the whole, yielding but which could yet be felt. Afraid of what might be lurking in the depths of that gloom she forced herself to move noisily and, making a greater effort, to break the silence.

"'Tis darker 'ere than 'tis in the yard," she said, thinking of the moon, and the pale flood it was pouring over meadow and common, over the nestling farms, over every place but the dark corner in which her home lay hid; contrasting the black and silver of the night with this brooding hush.

She put her hand on the shelf to find the matches. Once the lamp was lighted, once its cheery beams had driven out the dark, she would be more at ease. In a hurry to finish her work, Gray however, had forgotten to fill the brass receptacle with oil and Mrs. Byron was faced with a domestic problem. To manoeuvre the trolly sufficiently close to the wall would be difficult. Nevertheless it did not occur to her to ask Leadville's help and he, sitting motionless by the window, did not offer it.

"Strange 'ow I feel I must keep on craikin'," she thought, as, at last successful, she trundled off to the linhay. "'Tis just like Leadville 'ad now comed in and I must talk to'n. I dunno when I felt so whisht."

"We 'aven't got very much paraffin left," she said aloud as she returned with the lamp. "Jim didn't bring any. I dare say we got enough for to-night though, we don't burn much."

"Where's Jim to?" asked Leadville suddenly.

"Couldn't get a bit of coal," said Mrs. Byron, hanging the lamp in its bracket and trying to conceal the fact that his unexpected utterance had jarred her unruly nerves. "'Awken 'adn't a bit, but the boat is expected in to-night so Jim'll 'av to go in to-morrow and fetch it."

"Where's 'e to?" persisted Leadville.

Sabina held that if no fuel were thrown upon a fire, that fire must die. "'Ow d'yer think I knaw?"

"Is 'e to 'Ember?"

"Well, where else should 'e be, seein'..."

The man's deep chest lifted and fell. "Seein'," he interrupted fiercely, "as Tom wish for'm to be there, seein' as 'is wife wish it..."

"'Is—'is wife?" stammered Sabina.

"Don't Isolda wish it? You know she do; but my li'l bird don't wish it. I don't believe she do."

The blood, which had drained out of the woman's face, returned with a rush. She opened her lips but found herself voiceless and gasping. "Don't say like that, Leadville," she whispered at last. "Don't 'ee, don't 'ee say it—not to me."

The man threw back his head and, as if unable in any other way to express his feelings, broke into a laugh. "You!" he said. "You!"

Sabina turned the trolly handle, pushing it blindly out of the room. She was running away as a man runs from licking, climbing flames. She could not yield, could not knuckle under, but she could retreat until strong enough to resume the struggle. The tears were running down her face as she turned into the linhay, but they were tears forced from her by pain. Like the child in the story she could have said, "It is my eyes that's cryin', not me."

For behind the wall of her tired and suffering body was her indomitable spirit.

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